


drenched to a scarlet with the blood the girl must have lost

by Saraste



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Angst, F/F, Friendship, Non-con elements pertain to the counts attacks on Lucy, Onesided Love, Or Is It?, Pining, all love is just love, canon tweaking, slightly disturbing blood-transfusion imagery (drawn from the source text)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3322406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The transfusions were an invasion, an abuse, an assault, but Lucy bore them because they kept her alive, took her closer to the day whence her Mina would return to her. She was never warm any more, craving for lithe familiar arms around her, her fever dreams filled with scenes of happy days gone by, days she would probably never have again. Instead her nights, half-wake nightmares, were filled with foul breath, red eyes and the piercing of fangs on her withering flesh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drenched to a scarlet with the blood the girl must have lost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for femslash february in 2015. Lucy/Mina with slight canon tweakage with a possible continuation. I have much headcanon for the Stoker novel. I'm also a bit disturbed to realize that I used the 'blood-transfusions as assault' ideas I abhorred in my thesis in this fic. Ah well.
> 
> Title snagged from the novel.

 

She had felt their blood enter her, her body full of it, fighting it, only momentarily strengthened by it before whatever aid it rendered her was snatched away. It was all in vain, every single drop of the blood entering her body simply fed the monster visiting her bedchamber night after night as she struggled to hold on to the life which was being slowly robbed from her. She may have unconsciously courted the monster, surrendered to him in her sleep-walking state of half wakefulness and the man, the monster, had taken the chance offered, had seized her when she had been at her weakest. Had attacked her, bit her and left her to lie on the old cemetery in Whitby, chilled, confused and the remaining days of her life ticking away quicker than ever, her doom written on the lines on her face, the dark circles under her eyes, the painful rasp of her breath.

 

All things she had hidden behind a brave face once she had said her most bitter goodbye, damning herself for holding her tongue, but it was habit by now, she could not ask _her_ to stay, not when…

 

There was only one thing holding her on now, keeping her affixed to life. A name murmured from chapped lips, whispered in the long watches of the night when she was sleeping, alone. When her dear friends, her lovely boys, heard that name they said naught of it, thinking her anxiety to see her dear Mina again as her missing someone who was like a sister to her.

 

They could not have been more wrong.

 

The transfusions were an invasion, an abuse, an assault, but Lucy bore them because they kept her alive, took her closer to the day whence her Mina would return to her. She was never warm any more, craving for lithe familiar arms around her, her fever dreams filled with scenes of happy days gone by, days she would probably never have again. Instead her nights, half-wake nightmares, were filled with foul breath, red eyes and the piercing of fangs on her withering flesh.

 

“She is coming,” Arthur told her, holding her hand in his, so strong and loving. She wished ardently that she would have been a better woman, that she would have been able to refuse his suit when he asked for her hand in marriage. She had wanted nothing more than to kneel at Mina’s feet and ask her to be hers for the rest of their lives, but she had always been scared, for fear of seeing disgust in Mina’s face. Instead she had gotten this boy masquerading as a man, gallant and wanting nothing more than to shield her from the ills of the world, kneeling beside her, asking her to be his. After already having turned down two sweet honest men before Arthur, she hadn’t had the strength of will for naysaying.

 

Lucy’s fevered eyes looked up at Arthur, her dear Arthur, but in her fevered state saw only Mina’s beloved face in its place for her thoughts were of her now, when she managed to escape the horrors of her nights which haunted the hours of her short running days. “Mina?” she whispered, throat sore from sobbing, from the wordless screams during the endlessly long nights and the hours the monster spent at her bedside, _in her bed_ , drawing her dry from what strength the men in her life gave her. And yet her tongue had been tied, rendering her unable to tell what happened in the dark hours when she was abed, dying slowly, alone in the darkness save but the monster who was killing her.

 

Yet they knew something, Doctor Seward and the old man Van Helsing, filling her room with garlic flowers, strengthening her against the horrors which came anyway, for, one way or another, there was always some opening, some way the monster made its way to her bed and veins. And their fortifications had been too late in any case, for Lucy already half knew what she was doing and suspected that she herself cast away the protective wreaths, some nights.

 

“Yes, your darling Wilhelmina Murray, of whom you speak with such warmth,” Arthur tells her.

 

Talking of her is making her more lucid, it is almost like her love, the pure feeling of it, is rendering the creeping death clouding her mind less potent. Her eyes lock with Arthur’s and she… _he knows._ It is all there in his eyes, in his smiling face, in the warmth of his hand holding hers.

 

“I’ve always known, or suspected, that you never loved any of us as deeply as you have ever loved her, my dear Lucy,” he states, his words simple and matter-of-fact, even when what he is saying is not simple at all.

 

Yet maybe she is, for is not all love just love, no matter for whom or what you are willing to do to keep the one you love happy?

 

“Arthur?” she whispers, whimpers, softly and brokenly. She hates herself that he must know of this… that she has hurt him by letting him think she would marry him for love. That she has told him she would marry him even when her love has always been for another. ‘ _Even when Mina does not… has never said…_ ’ her treacherous mind supplies.

 

Lips are pressed to her forehead in a brotherly kiss. “I know for certain now and I do not care,” he tells her, “I only care for your happiness. We will find out what ails you. She is hurrying across Europe to reach you, my dear.”

 

Her heart swells at his words, she feels more grateful than what she can ever suitably express and the dark shadow of death seems to be far away, for how can she die when Mina is racing to come see her?

 

Hope in her heart she suffers through another transfusion that night, her frail body almost unable to stand it, only to have her veins emptied that very night against every precaution as the monster uses nature itself to smash its way into her room, into her bed and inside her skin. Her happy friends of a few nights, garlic flowers wreathed around the room, are snatched by her mother in her dying throes, leaving Lucy alone to face her greatest fear; her sweet mother dead of fright of the creature looming amidst broken glass, beside Lucy on the bed as the monster does his worst, robbing both of them of life. She lingers on, weak but with hope in her heart. For she cannot die without telling.

 

She sobs when wake, delirious from grief and death-fear, and in unconsciousness is haunted by the night, by what has been robbed of her.

 

She succumbs, weak and frightened, to inevitable death and something else beyond, sobbing Mina’s name as she draws her last breath, Mina’s footsteps echoing in the entry hall at that very moment, Lucy’s name on her lips the last thing Lucy hears in the world of the living.


End file.
